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The end of two-flavor political parties

For well more than a century, Americans have had a choice like that in an old
general store I used to go to in rural West Virginia with a swinging sign that
read, “Ice cream, guns and ammo.” The ice cream came in two flavors, vanilla and
chocolate. That has been our choice in political parties as well.

As of Nov. 2, there will be a new flavor: Libertarian. It is already there. It
has fully metabolized into the mainstream. Although not a Libertarian, Sarah
Palin is the La Passionara of this new awakening, and Ron Paul, banned from the
discussion in 2008, the Gray Champion. At first, that is when she was being
called a slut by David Letterman and regularly mocked by Tina Fey, the
eagle-eyed op-ed writers of the NYTs
sounded a clarion. One of their most capable, the one who lives abroad, said it
recalled to him those bad days when the broody earth spirits began to arise in
the gnostic German heart. I am sure he was not talking about the Moravians. But
today, in only two years, we are merely considered “extremists.” Now, that is pilgrim’s
progress.
I think psychiatrists call this binary state “undifferentiated.” It is like the
first division of an embryo: Ford and Chevy. I think it represents the most
generic form of the creation or an early form that will eventually evolve and
become multifaceted and full like the rest of the world and the people will
become whole. Two cars, Ford and Chevy, two ice creams. Two political parties.
Those were your choices. And they were both more or less the same. Back then
you couldn’t find a pizza anywhere in North Carolina outside of Chapel Hill.
And shrimp with lobster sauce in a Chinese restaurant in Milledgeville, Ga., hometown
of Flannery O’Connor, consisted of chipped beef on Rice Krispies. Now you could
probably get sushi and study Aikido there. There are all kinds of cars, foods
and ice cream today, but politics is still vanilla and chocolate, Democrat and
Republican. Next week brings the end of two-flavor politics.

The NYTs foreign correspondent
was right to see this as a heartland uprising or awakening. He was wrong to
instinctively see Americans who farm for a living as incipient fascists, but I
doubt he has ever visited the American heartland. His instinct did, however,
suggest the alienation between the urban east and the heartland that has
occurred. Gone are the days when the great writers and editors of NY, like
Harold T.P. Hayes and Willie Morris, came from the rural South. Gone as well
with them are the days of prose like Willa Cather’s and Truman Capote’s.
Editors come now from Ivy League schools, and that brings an added dimension of
class alienation.

They are not really snobs, as they are now being called. They are protecting
their territory, and their territory is their generation and its icons, ideas
and avatars. And the generation has ended. All that is left of it is Keith
Richards and his narcotic dream of his mother killing his cat. And Hillary, but
there will always be Hillary. Blame it on the London School of
Economics-educated economist Mick Jagger, who first introduced us to Friedrich
Hayek.

This must be the way the world ends when it ends badly; in a dream of a dead
cat.